Luther gives an account of man and the law: nature initially trusts in the law for justification; the law then grows into an infinite and merciless tyrant; finally the righteousness of God, given through faith alone, liberates the believer from the law’s horrors. Calvin provides an account of man before God’s judgment: the believer first takes confidence in nature’s abilities; one then comes under an infinite law in the form of God’s unyielding holiness, “descending into the self” until one recognizes nature’s “nothingness”; then the grace of Christ, again the resolution of the dynamic, announces the believer as justified by faith alone, propelling nature into a life of ceaseless obedience. Unlike Luther, however, Calvin applies the infinite character of the law to both the inner and the outer aspects of man’s nature and sees the law’s infinity as illustrative of its embedding in grace.
For Calvin, Christ grounds the law or Old Testament as its foundation; Christ is likewise at work, in a muted way, within the law through its ceremonies and the promises that point to him; and he is the law’s goal as the terminus in which it finds fulfillment. Man approaches the law in its proper context as enfolded within the gracious covenant established in Christ, whose delivery of justifying grace entails engagement in the non-justifying but necessary law allied with it. If, at this point, Luther should accuse Calvin of blurring the antagonism between law and gospel, Calvin would respond that while the law certainly does not justify, God is always one and unified. So also is his revelation through Christ’s grace and the law embedded within it one and unified, a revelation consistent throughout salvation history. Applied to the life of man, this revelation entails not only saving grace, but the uninterrupted obedience that accompanies it.
Calvin’s version of religious experience begins with nature’s temptation to ascribe righteousness to itself in light of its gifts, which include natural virtues and the goodness that men can achieve by human standards. Concentration on these gifts results in pride in one’s merit and a consequent sluggishness toward the obedience demanded by the law. Nature always wants to flatter itself, but this flattery is anathema to justification in Christ. For this reason Calvin directs the believer to the law, not that it should justify, but that by it men might “shake off their sluggishness” and be “pinch[ed] awake to their imperfection.” This “pinching” amounts to a terrifying confrontation with God’s holiness that decimates man’s former confidence. Calvin describes this “descent into the self” from two angles, one focused upon the holiness of God and the other upon the depravity of nature. This movement stands at the center of Docetism’s logic for the inner man, described by Calvin at various points in his writings alternately from the perspective of God and from that of the sinner:
Our discourse is concerned with the justice not of a human court but of a heavenly tribunal, lest we measure by our own small measure the integrity of works needed to satisfy the divine judgment . . . Yet surely it is held of precious little value if it is not recognized as God’s justice and so perfect that nothing can be admitted except what is in every part whole and complete and undefiled by any corruption. Such was never found in man and never will be . . . for [before God’s justice] we deal with a serious matter, and do not engage in frivolous word battles. To this question, I insist, we must apply our mind if we would profitably inquire concerning true righteousness: How shall we reply to the Heavenly Judge when he calls us to account? Let us envisage for ourselves that Judge, not as our minds naturally imagine him, but as he is depicted for us in Scripture: by whose brightness the stars are darkened; by whose strength the mountains are melted; by whose wrath the earth is shaken; beside whose purity all things are defiled; whose righteousness not even the angels can bear; who makes not the guilty man innocent; whose vengeance when once kindled penetrates to the depths of hell. Let us behold him, I say, sitting in judgment to examine the deeds of men: Who will stand confident before his throne? “Who . . . can dwell with the everlasting fire?” asks the prophet. “Who. . .can dwell with everlasting burnings?” . . . “If thou, O Lord, shouldst mark iniquities, Lord, who shall stand?”
Calvin’s vision from the vantage point of the Judge is calculated to inspire trembling and consternation. He elsewhere describes this vision from the perspective of the nature so judged:
[Under the teaching of the law] we must then . . . descend into ourselves. From this we may at length infer two things. First, by comparing the righteousness of the law with our life, we learn how far we are from conforming to God’s will. And for this reason we are unworthy to hold our place among his creatures—still less to be accounted his children. Secondly, in considering our powers, we learn that they are not only too weak to fulfill the law, but utterly nonexistent. From this necessarily follows mistrust of our own virtue, then anxiety and trepidation of mind. For the conscience cannot bear the weight of iniquity without soon coming before God’s judgment. Truly, God’s judgment cannot be felt without evoking the dread of death. So also, constrained by the proofs of its impotence, the conscience cannot but fall straightway into deep despair of its own powers. Both of these emotions engender humility and self-abasement. Thus it finally comes to pass that man, thoroughly frightened by the awareness of eternal death, which he sees as justly threatening him because of his own unrighteousness, betakes himself to God’s mercy alone, as the only haven of safety. Thus, realizing that he does not possess the ability to pay to the law what he owes, and despairing in himself, he is moved to seek and await help from another quarter.
These two passages capture the spirit of the observation with which Calvin opens the Institutes, that true wisdom consists in two parts, “the knowledge of God and of ourselves.” This knowledge elevates God to the highest while it strips nature of any claim to righteousness. The sinner comes before the God by whose power the earth was formed, and before whose wrath it quakes with anguish, with the result that he feels the full severity of the law and the unqualified powerlessness of nature to appease its Maker. To know the immeasurable greatness of God is to know the antithetically immeasurable smallness of man, and beyond this, the perdition awaiting sinners apart from grace. The knowledge of God for Calvin presupposes this dual realization of the justice and majesty of God and the worthlessness of his disobedient creatures, a realization constitutive of the descent into the self.
At the heart of this descent is man’s acknowledgment that nature’s powers are “utterly nonexistent,” the perception that immediately precedes the experience of grace. His consideration of that grace “will be foolish and weak unless every man admit his guilt before the Heavenly Judge, and concerned about his own acquittal, willingly cast himself down and confess his nothingness.” To be cleansed of its “thousand sins,” what can a nature that is nothing do? Thus the denigration of nature unto nothingness that Calvin repeats throughout the Institutes, illustrating the progress of the descent into the self until one “betakes himself to God’s mercy alone, as the only haven of safety.”
Looking to Christ out of nature’s depravity, man observes “a wonderful consolation: that we perceive judgment to be in the hands of him who has already destined us to share with him the honor of judging! Far indeed is he from mounting his judgment seat to condemn us!” The man stricken unto nothingness discovers a great solace, a righteousness imputed by the Son’s grace “that he may care for the consciences of his people.” This turn of events elicits the “feeling of delight” in which the heart throws off the threat of perdition just as it is remade in its eagerness to obey, now a heart of flesh rather than stone. The destined graced firmly stamped upon the will, the Christian sets about the life of ceaseless obedience with the zeal of an assured conscience.
The docetic logic pervades this account of inner religious experience. As for Luther, for Calvin the law and nature combine in an initial leaning toward